One for Sorrow
by embroiderama
Summary: Dean has gone missing with no trace Sam looks for him and then has to cope with what he finds. NOT a death story.


Title: One for Sorrow

Author: embroiderama

Characters: Sam, Dean (gen)

Rating: R

Warnings: violence, aftermath of torture, see full notes

Spoilers: none

Word Count: 3,167

Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, alas.

Summary: Dean's missing. Sam's searching.

Notes: This is a remix of ellipsisblack's story Sunday's Child, written for remixredux. Missyjack and elanurel were kind enough to beta.

I've struggled a little with classifying this story. Sunday's Child is wincest, but in a way where I felt like the connection between them was more about love and comfort and less about hot, lusty sex. The timeline of my remix ends before the sex begins in the original, but I did write with the knowledge that this Sam is a Sam who has slept with his brother. That informs his reactions, you know? Given that, there are some parts that hover between smarm and slash. Within the bounds of this story, I call it gen.

Dean should have been back forty-five minutes ago. Sam unfolded himself from where he sat hunched over the laptop and looked at his watch again. The Mexican take-out place wasn't that far away, just a few blocks away from the motel, and Dean had opted to walk, his legs cramped from too many hours in the car.

Another time, Sam would have assumed his brother had simply met a girl more interesting than their taco dinners, but he knew Dean was too tired. They both were--road-weary and hungry and ready to crash.

Dean should have been back forty-five minutes ago.

Not wanting to hear Dean's griping if Sam called him when he was practically outside the door, Sam walked to the window that looked out on the motel parking lot and pushed aside the drapes. No Dean in the lot or on the sidewalk beyond, just a solitary magpie that sat preening its feathers on the hood of the Impala.

_One for sorrow._

_Stupid_, Sam thought, but it didn't stop the cold twist of fear from making itself known in his stomach. Sam gave in, dialed Dean's cell; when it rang over to the voicemail, Sam looked back outside.

The bird was still there. Alone.

It was an old habit. A child's rhyme, a child's comfort in a dangerous world. That's what he told himself, anyway, when he got to Stanford and tried to scold himself out of the habit of repeating the old rhyme to himself--silently, or sometimes just on a puff of breath--when he was worried or stressed, when his mind needed to tread a comfortably worn groove.

_One for sorrow, two for mirth  
Three for a wedding, four for a birth  
Five for silver, six for gold  
Seven for a secret not to be told._

He usually stopped there. That was the rhyme Mrs. O'Brien, one of the old ladies who went to Pastor Jim's church, told him one day. He was bored, waiting for Dad and Dean to get back from wherever they were, standing outside looking at a flock of birds roosting in the winter-bare trees behind the church building. She went back inside, and Sam sat on the old swing set, pumping his legs in time to the words until the familiar roar of the Impala drove away the birds.

Later, when Dad heard him whispering the rhyme to himself, he'd interrupted Sam's count.

"There's more to it, you know?"

"Huh?"

"There are more lines," his father explained. "Eight for heaven, nine for hell, and ten for the devil's own self."

Sam remembered the dark chill those lines gave him. "I don't like that part."

Dad just shrugged, the barest edge of a smile on his face. "Doesn't mean it's not there."

In between finding the remains of their take-out scattered across the sidewalk on Monday night and discovering the ransom note shoved under the motel room door the next Tuesday morning, Sam slept only when exhaustion swamped him like a wave of cold, fetid water.

Sam searched the town, first in the car, then on foot, and then in the car again. He worked a rough, squared-off spiral pattern from where he found the abandoned remains of their dinner—through and around the center of town, out into the residential neighborhoods. He didn't know what he was looking for exactly; nobody had seen Dean's abduction, or nobody would admit it. On his first pass through the neighborhood between the motel and the Mexican restaurant, he questioned people working in the stores, scared the crap out of a couple of teenagers hanging out on a corner. Nothing.

A solitary crow perched on top of a drainpipe at the entrance to the alley where Dean was taken. Sam glared at the bird, watched it cock its head at him as though looking back. If the bird was a witness, it wasn't telling him squat.

Each day, when the sun rose with Dean still missing, God only knew where, it felt like a blasphemy. He spent half the day calling every contact he and Dean had left, searching local news reports, police reports, calling hospitals. The other half of the day he continued to search, driving aimlessly through the area, not knowing what he thought he would find. Every bag of trash or old rolled-up carpet lying at the side of the road flashed into Sam's mind as Dean's body, _God no_. He felt like he was trawling for a free wi-fi connection, waiting for the circuit inside his brain that said Dean to come to life and lead him to the source.

As the days passed he knew Dean could be hundreds, thousands of miles away. Nonetheless, he was paralyzed in that town, unable to leave, unable to take imagining Dean getting free, stumbling back to the motel to find Sam, and Sam three states away.

Because Dean had to come back.

Sam drove some more, canvassing the north side of town, and the road blurred in front of him, exhaustion pulling everything out like taffy until he couldn't figure out if the road n front of him was curved or straight.

He yanked the wheel to pull the car over to the side of the road and braked, barely remembering to put the car in park as he leaned his head onto the steering wheel. _Just need to close my eyes for a minute, then I can drive back to the motel._ Dean would kill him if he crashed the car. _Shit._

Sam kept his head down on the wheel, concentrated on breathing in deep and smooth until he felt like he could drive halfway safely. When he lifted his head to look back out at the road, he saw a magpie looking back at him--just one, perched on the corner of the hood.

_One for sorrow._

Sam put the car in drive and pulled out onto the road again. As he drove back to the motel, he kept the radio off and whispered the rhyme under his breath like a chant. Keeping himself awake. Keeping himself together.

Hours later, Sam woke up, sprawled fully dressed on the bed, his legs hanging off the edge of the bed where he'd more or less collapsed after stumbling in from the parking lot. He stood and walked blindly into the bathroom, and when he came out he saw the note. A rectangle of white just inside the door.

It could have been a take-out menu. Could have been a note from the hotel management because he wasn't too sure which credit card Dean had given them. Could have been anything but Sam knew it was about Dean. Bitterness stung at the back of his throat, and then he was across the room in two long strides, the paper in his hand.

There wasn't ever any question. The Colt for Dean was a cheap fucking trade—they could find another way to kill the demon. Or not, Sam didn't really give a shit about that when Dean had been in these assholes' hands for a week. He'd do his best to hold onto the Colt and still get Dean out; Dean would never forgive him if he didn't try. But he'd toss the Colt in the goddamn Gulf of Mexico to get Dean back safe.

The coordinates in the note led him past the edge of town, out into the rural stretch of nothing that lay between this town and the next. He passed the occasional little clutch of crumbling trailers and then another mile of fields separated by nothing more than stands of trees before he came to a farmhouse.

As he drove toward where he hoped to find Dean, where he _had_ to find Dean, the birds continued to taunt him. Always just one—on a signpost, on a wire fence, bursting into flight from the road just ahead of the Impala's tires.

When he finally pulled up to the farmhouse, he heard a sharp, avian cry, looked up and saw a line of crows sitting on the edge of the old building's roof. More than seven, there were—_shit, nine. Eight for heaven, nine for hell_. Stupid superstition or not, Sam knew that inside this house he'd find his brother's hell.

He could have held onto the Colt, probably, if he hadn't been so exhausted. Dad would kick his ass, letting himself get so worn out on a hunt, but he thought Dad would have been a little bit proud, nonetheless. 

He'd never had less regard for hurting humans in a fight. The one he left unconscious with a concussion and a shot-out knee would almost certainly survive, but he'd never walk the same again. The second man escaped unscathed, carrying the Colt and dragging the third, who must have bled all over their goddamn car from the knife in his arm. But the fourth--he'd come at Sam from the back, and exhausted or not the reflexes Dad had drilled into him sent Sam spinning around, pinning the man to the wall. Sam hadn't meant to hit him quite as hard as he did, but he couldn't bring himself to mourn the fact that the man would likely not be able to breathe out of that bruised larynx for very long.

When Sam saw the door to the basement, padlocked and solid, he knew he'd found Dean's hell. The lock picked easy, and as soon as the door slid open Sam could smell the signs of Dean's confinement. The sharp stink of piss burned his eyes, and the underlying reek of sweat and shit turned his stomach. Misery and fear and hatred.

When he got to the bottom of the steps and saw Dean—slumped forward in the chair he was bound to, body nearly hanging from the ropes around his arms, filthy, bloody, blindfolded—Sam thought he probably lost it a little. He didn't remember crossing the room, didn't remember kneeling down, but he found himself on the cold stone floor in front of Dean.

Dean jerked at the snick of Sam's knife unfolding, and Sam reached a trembling hand up to tug the blindfold away from Dean's head. "It's me, it's Sam. It's Sam," he murmured, watching Dean's eyes blink rapidly against the dim light of the basement.

"Sammy," Dean breathed out, attempting to move his bound arms and wincing at the movement. Sam hurried to hack through the ropes with his knife, keeping himself right in front of Dean, expecting it when the weight of Dean's torso leaned into him as soon as the ropes fell loose.

Dean's left hand--swollen, purple, the fingers distorted--caught Sam's attention, and Sam took it in his own hands, trying to be gentle, but Dean hissed in response. Sam tried to swallow down his panic but felt it building anyway. He had to help Dean, but he wasn't sure that there was any way he could touch Dean without hurting him.

"Gonna have to help me a bit," Dean rasped, his voice bone dry and wrecked. "Hurt my ankle."

As though he'd twisted it tripping over a root. _Jesus_, Dean was torn up. Sam knew he had to pull himself together. "I got the bastards."

"Good," Dean coughed out, and Sam hoped like hell he'd left a bottle of water in the car. "Assholes." His tone of voice sounded strangely like the way he talked about people who drove too slowly in the passing lane, and the normality of that in the face of Dean's physical condition forced a laugh out of Sam.

The laughter helped, even when Dean leaned on him heavily as they stumbled out of that basement, even when Sam listened to the little grunts of pain Dean probably didn't know he was making with nearly every step, every grip of Sam's hands.

Sam didn't notice if the birds were still there when they left. Dean sat in the passenger seat, breathing in a tight, stuttering rhythm at every bump in the road, and Sam struggled to keep his eyes on the black surface in front of him. He wanted nothing more than to keep looking at Dean, keep touching him, his hands on that warm skin and blood and bone and muscle that meant home to him.

Dean had walked out of that house, walked out of hell, but as far as Sam was concerned that was enough. He pulled up in front of the door to their room and yanked the keys out of the ignition, rushing around to Dean's door. Dean was awake, barely. Despite what appeared to be constant pain, the rhythm of the road had dragged him down into a light stupor.

"Huh?" Dean murmured when Sam pulled open his door and reached in to wrap an arm around his back.

"I gotta get you inside." Sam tried to keep his voice calm, matter-of-fact, so that Dean would stay a few notches short of awake.

"I c'n walk," Dean argued when Sam snaked his other arm under Dean's knees and started to maneuver him up out of the seat.

"Yeah, whatever," Sam grunted. As worn out as he was, the weight and awkward angle were difficult, but eventually he had Dean out of the car. He pushed the car door closed with his foot and carried Dean across the narrow stretch of cement to their room.

_Should have unlocked the door first. Fuck._ Sam braced Dean's torso against the wall and gently let his legs down to the ground, holding him up enough to keep the weight off his bad leg.

"Jesus, Sammy," Dean complained, but then the door was open; Sam pulled Dean close to him, dragged him the few steps to the bed closest to the door.

Sam wanted nothing more than to lie down on the bed next to Dean. Just put his head down, just for a moment. _God, please._ But he knew he had to keep going, at least long enough to make sure Dean was just passed out and not actually bleeding to death.

He hauled himself up, grabbed the first aid kit, and cut off Dean's shirt. _Sorry man, too wrecked to wear again anyway._ He started at the top, his careful fingers probing the bruises on Dean's face, the already-healing lump on the back of his head, his swollen shoulder that felt like it had gone back into the joint on its own. Dean came around as Sam swept his fingertips over the deep, ugly bruising over Dean's ribs. Broken, some of them, and way more prominent than they'd been a week ago, but his breathing sounded okay. His hands were worse. Red, angry rope burns ringed his wrists, and the mess of his broken fingers made Sam's stomach churn at the knowledge of the pain Dean must have endured.

Sam removed Dean's boots and socks. His left ankle was clearly sprained, swollen, but not too bad. He'd be able to walk on it in a day or so with an ace bandage, and Sam was grateful for that small mercy.

Sam pulled the filthy jeans and underwear over Dean's hips. Even when Dean had been so weak after the electrocution, Sam had never seen him this vulnerable. Naked and semi-conscious, his sex curled up soft against his filthy thighs--it was wrong.

Sam stood up abruptly, grabbed the wad of stinking denim and cotton and stalked off to the bathroom. He tossed the clothes in the shower stall and closed the door, then braced his hands on the sink and bent over. He hung there, just breathing until the sting of ammonia faded out of his nose and he no longer tasted bile in the back of his throat. 

_One for sorrow, two for mirth  
Three for a wedding, four for a birth_

When his breath felt steady once more, he wet every threadbare washcloth he could find and walked back out into the room. He couldn't hold Dean up in the shower without risking hurting him more, and he couldn't let him spend another night like this.

There was no other choice.

Sam rubbed one warm, wet cloth over Dean's stomach and thighs and privates. When Dean's front was clean, Sam put his hands behind Dean's knees and his bad shoulder and turned him onto his side. He thanked God that Dean was out for this. With a fresh cloth, Sam cleaned the back of Dean's thighs, his ass, until the usually-pale skin was pink with irritation but finally clean.

Sam tossed the used washcloths into the shower with Dean's clothes and filled up an empty soda bottle with water from the tap.

Dean's skin was bone-dry under the dirt, and Sam knew he really could use an IV, not to mention X-rays and better pain meds than anything they had stocked. The hospital would wait until tomorrow, but for now Dean would have to wake up enough to get some water in his dehydrated body.

Sam sat on the bed beside Dean and woke him with a hand to the side of his face. "Hey Dean, come on, you gotta drink something."

Dean roused but not all the way. He mumbled something that sounded like, "No," but let Sam pull him up to rest against his chest. Dean's face twisted in pain at the change in position, his expression revealing more than Dean would ever let show if he were in control.

Listening to Dean's short, ragged breaths, feeling the back of his brother's ribs expanding against his own chest, Sam let the words that had been running through his mind for hours become audible.

"One for sorrow," he murmured into Dean's ear. "Two for mirth." And if he found himself rocking a little in time with the words, Dean couldn't be humiliated by what he didn't remember.

Sam lifted the bottle to Dean's lips and tilted it enough to let a trickle of water stream into Dean's mouth. "Three for a wedding, four for a birth."

Dean swallowed, his Adam's apple pulsing underneath the thick layer of stubble on his throat. "Five for silver, six for gold."

When Dean had swallowed half the bottle, Sam put it down on he table then pulled the covers out from under Dean's legs before letting him lay back down.

Dean seemed more comfortable on his side, curled up around his ribs. Sam lay down behind him, and finally it felt okay to sleep for a while. Finally, now that Dean was safe, now that Dean was there. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel Dean's warmth along the front of his body, and he could smell Dean, too--sharper and stronger than usual but still so welcome. Sam inhaled the familiar smell of sweat from the back of Dean's neck and whispered in his ear, "Seven for a secret not to be told," before he slept.


End file.
